By Rezdy — 30 Dec 2014

If you’ve been keeping up with our blog posts, you’ll notice we publish a lot of content for tour operators – including educational slide decks.

Here are our most popular ones from the past year, according to number of downloads.

1. The Best Booking Channels for Tours & Activities

Selling direct to your customers is not enough to maximise your profits. You need to increase your profits by investing in the right distribution channels.

Why? Because more distribution channels means more ways to reach customers.

Here are 7 distribution channels that you can’t ignore.

The list includes:

  • Websites and social media.
  • Online travel agencies.
  • Visitor information centres.
  • Government tourism sites.
  • Online review sites.
  • Voucher sites.
  • Concierge services.

Want more info? See what tour operators have said about their most effective booking channels in Australia and the US.

2. Millennial Travel Statistics for Tours & Activities

There is plenty of valuable research on millennials that tour operators can make use of.

Here we’ve compiled some key statistics that will help you to understand the millennial mindset so you can capture that lucrative slice of the market.

Top 3 tips:

Want more info? Check out all of our posts on millennials.

3. How to Set Agent Commission for Tours & Activities

Setting the right commission rate for your agents is a tricky task for tours and activities.  It’s about maintaining a delicate balance of motivating your agents to sell your tours, while also remaining profitable.

We break down the essentials of what you need to know to get your rates right in distributing your tour products.

Steps:

  • Know your basic rate lingo.
  • Understand industry standard commission rates.
  • Quote commission rates.
  • Get ongoing management right.

Want more info? Download our comprehensive Distribution Channel eBook.

4. How to Choose an Online Booking Software for Tours & Activities

In this day and age, over 50% of today’s travellers are choosing to book online instead of over the phone. It’s officially impossible to ignore the need for online booking software.

But tour operators are swamped with a multitude of options. With so many choices, how do you find one that perfectly meets the needs of your tour or activity business?

Here are 3 steps to finding your perfect booking software match.

Steps:

  • Know the costs involved.
  • Decide which features you want.
  • Assess the software vendor.

Want more info? Download our Buyer’s Guide to Booking Software Selection.

5. Top 3 Tour & Activity Sector Myths

In the Tours & Activities sector, there are 3 major assumptions being made:

  • People tend to book tours and activities via offline sources;
  • People tend to book tours and activities last minute; and,
  • The tours and activities market is too hard.

Being a leading online booking software provider geared towards tours and activities, Rezdy’s data has allowed us to dissect these common myths.

Here’s an edited version of what our CEO & Founder, Simon Lenoir, presented at Travel Tech in Sydney, 2014.

Conclusions:

Tour operators using Rezdy’s booking software are getting the majority of their bookings via offline channels.

They input these bookings into their online booking system to have a consolidated view of their reservations calendar.

Only small activities such as bike and kayak rental are booked 24 hours in advance.

The majority of booking revenue is coming from people who book 7-30 days in advance, suggesting that the ‘bigger’ the thing to do is, the more they think about it in advance. After all, these activities will make up the memories of your whole vacation.

While the tours and activities market is difficult to tackle, it can be done if tour operator software providers like Rezdy are successful.

Suppliers are too busy running the show to update their inventory in each OTA’s backend. This makes them shy away from connecting with too many OTAs, fearing the workload will be too much.

This is why technological innovation (eg. >Viator’s API connecting with third party booking software) will unlock more opportunities for tour operators, and bring them more bookings.

Want more info? Get in touch with us to learn how we can help you with online distribution.

[hs id=”3487adfc-049a-494f-9983-b1c7f66e4610″] [hs id=”d9da4227-9a1f-4a26-9eb1-cca9f94b52b7″]